


462. death mark

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [96]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-04
Updated: 2016-10-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 11:55:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8205899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Who’s Beth, Helena says.There’s no way I would know, is there, Pupok hisses. This is stupid, Helena. They’re just words. It’s distracting you from what’s important. Your faith. Your mission.I know, Helena whispers. But she pulls her shirt up and looks at the words anyways. Who is Beth? Someone who isn’t her soulmate. Someone who isn’t made for her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: abuse, mild self-harm]

Your soulmate’s first words are supposed to show up on your skin – nobody knows exactly when, but it happens. When your soul is meant for someone else, it happens always.

Helena doesn’t know this, so: when she is eight years old and the word _I’m not Beth_ curl up in the skin over her stomach she tries to scratch them off with her nails. They’re not even Ukrainian, these letters, they’re strange and dangerous as claws at her belly. She doesn’t know what they mean. So she sits in the convent-closet desperately scratching scratching – and they bleed, and they hurt, but they don’t go away. No matter what Helena does, the words don’t go away.

\--

When Sarah is eight years old she is adopted by a woman named S, who wears a thick leather bracelet on her arm that she never takes off. Sarah keeps staring at it, so S sits her down and explains: sometimes your soul belongs with someone else’s soul, and their first words to you show up on your arm. She pulls off the leather bracelet and shows Sarah _hold him still, wouldja_ written in a hasty scrawl up her arm.

 _Do you have to marry them_ , Sarah says, _your soulmate, do you have to spend forever with them?_

 _No, love_ , Siobhan says. _Sometimes they aren’t even someone you want to kiss. They’re just somebody that your soul knows._

 _Where’s yours_ , Sarah says.

 _Gone now_.

_Your soulmate can die?_

_Anyone can die_ , Siobhan says, looking terribly sad.

\--

Helena is eleven and she learns English. I’m not Beth. I’m not Beth. I’m not Beth. She tells Tomas that and Tomas hits her and she stops telling Tomas that. She sits in the basement of their latest home-that-isn’t-a-home and tells Pupok: _I’m not Beth._

 _I know you aren’t, idiot,_ Pupok says. _You don’t have to tell me._

 _Who’s Beth_ , Helena says.

 _There’s no way I would know, is there_ , Pupok hisses. _This is stupid, Helena. They’re just words. It’s distracting you from what’s important. Your faith. Your mission._

 _I know,_ Helena whispers. But she pulls her shirt up and looks at the words anyways. Who is Beth? Someone who isn’t her soulmate. Someone who isn’t made for her.

\--

In bars and clubs Sarah picks out guys with words twining up their necks or over their arms or down their chests. She likes it: knowing that this can’t be permanent. What’s the point of a soulmate anyways, really? What if you’re better off alone?

Vic doesn’t have a mark. Lots of people don’t. It doesn’t mean you’re broken or anything – although when Sarah is sitting in the bathroom wiping blood off her face or prodding at a bruise she wonders if it does. Maybe Vic’s clean skin means _something_ , something about what’s inside of him. Maybe it means she should run.

But she doesn’t. She runs, yeah, but she runs _with_. Not _from_.

That’s always been her mistake.

\--

Helena keeps killing all these girls with her face, Ania-Camille-Danya, like an alphabet with a piece cut of out of. The piece is: Beth. The piece is: not Beth, not-Beth, not-Beth out there somewhere waiting for Helena to find her. At night she presses her hand to the skin of her stomach and imagines not-Beth out there doing the same, waiting for her. There are words on the tip of her tongue that are going to mean something to someone, and Helena doesn’t even know what they are.

 _I’m not Beth_ , whispers Pupok.

 _That’s mean,_ Helena says. _That wasn’t what you said first. Anyways._

 _It’d be better if it was me,_ Pupok says. _She’s just gonna let you down. She’s gonna leave. It’ll hurt, kiddo. You know it will._

 _It won’t hurt_ , says Helena with perfect assurance. She presses her hand to the skin over her stomach, where the words – after all this time – do not hurt.

\--

Cosima has _thank you_ in perfect cursive, swooping over the skin between her lungs. She has to pull down her shirt to show Sarah, and she does so with a wink. Alison won’t talk about it. Paul won’t talk about it either – but he doesn’t notice anything missing on Sarah’s skin, so she can make some guesses about him and Beth.

Really, most of the people in Sarah’s life don’t have a mark. It’s normal. Having a mark, having a mate, having someone who’s another piece of you, it’s – abnormal, it isn’t quite right. It doesn’t fit.

Sarah wakes up in the middle of the night and goes into Beth’s bathroom, locks the door, sits on the toilet. She stares at the tile. There are no answers.

\--

Helena is going to kill Elizabeth Childs. Helena is going to kill Elizabeth Childs. Helena keeps staring at the photograph, wanting so badly to touch it, wanting to eat it alive. Elizabeth has Beth in it, but Elizabeth isn’t Beth. Not-Beth. She’s not Beth. On the plane ride to Toronto Helena pulls up her shirt and reads

\--

 _I’m not Beth_.

The woman buckles like her strings have been cut and pins Sarah to the ground. She shakes her hood off. Her eyes are very wide.

 _It’s me_ , she says. _Not-Beth. It’s me_.

 _I don’t know what you’re talking about_ , Sarah says. Her copy puts a knife to her eye and with her other hand yanks her tanktop out from where it’s been tucked into her pants. There, above her liver, Sarah sees the familiar crooked lurch of her own _B_. She shudders, full-body.

 _That’s – a trick,_ she says. _That’s sick, you’re – it’s –_ and she’s shaking, and her brain is shuddering wildly.

 _Can’t you feel it?_ says her copy. _Didn’t I say it right? Didn’t I—_

Sarah’s fingers find the rebar. She stabs the woman in the liver, right there, right over those stupid lying words. With the metal stabbing through them, you can’t even read them anymore. It’s like they’re not even there.

\--

Sarah stumbles home and into Beth’s shower and out of Beth’s shower and to the front of the mirror. She turns around, examines every inch of her body.

Still blank. Her skin is still blank, every single piece of it. That’s good. That’s what it should look like. That’s what it’s supposed to be.

Or at least that’s what Sarah tells herself, as she starts to cry.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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